The Green Man (23 page)

‘You have known her a long time?'

‘All my life. She was much younger than I was, but we played together as children and always I was aware that the girl others saw was not the person who subjected me to petty humiliations; the girl who played unpleasant tricks on others and then made it look as though the fault were mine. I was punished many times for leading her into mischief, when the truth was exactly the opposite, when I had been trying to rescue her from the results of her own folly. Oh no, it did not surprise me at all to learn that she was unfaithful and was scheming to murder her own husband.'

‘But until you learned all this from Master Sinclair yesterday, you had no firm knowledge that your cousin had taken a lover? You have no inkling of who he might have been?'

‘Inkling?'

‘Idea. Suspicion. I find it difficult to believe that something had not come to your attention.'

Mistress Beton gave me a hostile stare.

‘It was not my business to poke and pry,' she protested. ‘And with such a loving, adoring husband as Robert, I felt sure even Aline must be satisfied. Her smallest wish was like a royal command to him. She was indulged, petted, pampered. Why would she need or want another man?' She shrugged. ‘It is true that she very often went out alone and stayed out for several hours at a time, but this I could understand. Too much adoration can occasionally become …'

‘Overwhelming?'

‘Yes.' She nodded. ‘That is the word I was looking for. But surely not for long.'

I guessed that Maria Beton had been envious of her cousin. To be – what was it she had said? – indulged petted and pampered was not a condition that had ever come her way. And yet too much affection could be a burden, as I had learned from a case I had investigated in Bristol only last year. But it did not warrant pre-planned, cold-blooded murder. Nothing did. I got back to the matter in hand.

‘Mistress Beton,' I said earnestly, ‘do you have any idea who could have removed the diary before your cousin's return home? How many days elapsed between Master Sinclair finding it and Monday?'

Again the housekeeper frowned and queried a word. ‘Elapsed?'

‘Passed.'

‘Ah!' The frown deepened as she concentrated. ‘Let me see. Aline and John left for Roslin on Thursday. That would be a week ago today.' I nodded. She went on, ‘I decided to turn out that cupboard the following morning when I noticed, while making the bed, that Aline had left the key on the shelf where she kept her pots of unguents and ointments for her skin. She was very proud of her beautiful white skin.'

Afraid of being sidetracked by further female jealousies, I interrupted quickly, ‘And that was when you found the diary?'

‘Yes, hidden under the skirt of her wedding dress which Aline kept folded on one of the shelves.'

‘What was it like? The diary, I mean.'

‘Oh, two or three leaves of parchment tied together with red ribbon threaded through holes pierced at the edges.'

This description tallied with Master Sinclair's. I sucked my teeth thoughtfully.

‘So this was Friday?' She murmured agreement. ‘What happened to it when your employer had read it? Do you know?'

Yet again I had ruffled her feathers.

‘Robert is not my employer. I keep house for him as a favour, as a kinswoman, and because Aline is not – was not – domesticated and regarded cleaning and cooking as beneath her. As for your question, when Robert had finished reading the diary, he replaced it on the shelf, under the wedding dress, where I had found it. Then he closed and locked the cupboard before I had a chance to finish dusting it and told me to leave him alone. He sat down on the edge of the bed looking, as I said just now, as if he had received his death blow.'

‘You naturally asked him what was the matter?'

She inclined her head. ‘Naturally. But he refused to say. I could not force him to confide in me, so I did as he asked and went away.'

‘Consumed with curiosity.'

A faint smile, the first she had given, lifted the corners of her mouth and lightened the heavy features.

‘Of course.' That was honest at any rate.

‘Did you return to the bedchamber later to see what you could discover?'

The small eyes glinted at me beneath their sandy lashes.

‘For what purpose? As Robert and I have both told you, I cannot read.'

I grinned a little sheepishly in acknowledgement of the second trap I had set for her.

‘Mistress,' I resumed, ‘you say that this all took place on the Friday.'

‘Friday morning,' she agreed.

‘Very well then.' I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. ‘Between that time and Monday, when Mistress Sinclair returned home, who called at the house? More importantly, who went upstairs? In short, who could have removed the diary from the cupboard in the bedchamber? Who would have known it was there?'

If I had hoped to fluster her, I was disappointed. And if she was concealing any guilty knowledge she hid it admirably.

‘Unfortunately, I can remember no one.' She added with a touch of irritation, ‘I have already been questioned on this matter and have given the same answer.'

‘But the diary is missing. Somebody must have taken it,' I argued.

She shrugged. ‘This is true. But I cannot tell you or anyone else what I do not know. As far as I am concerned, no one called at the house on either Saturday or Sunday. I was busy and Robert told me to deny him to any callers.'

‘He was still in a state of shock?'

‘He certainly did not wish to burden himself with visitors.'

I digested this, then said, ‘Let me understand this clearly, Mistress. You are saying that no one at all, neither male nor female, knocked on your door throughout the whole of Saturday and Sunday?'

Maria Beton inclined her head for a second time. In spite of her plebeian looks, she had a regal air about her.

‘That is what I am saying, yes. Mistress Callender came in on Friday afternoon with a recipe for quince jelly she had promised to give me, but after her, no one.'

‘Mistress Callender?' I queried sharply. ‘The goodwife from next door?' Foolishly, I had overlooked the rest of Friday. ‘Did you at any time during her visit leave her alone?'

My companion regarded me in astonishment.

‘My good man,' she expostulated, ‘you surely cannot suspect our neighbour! That is foolishness! How could she possibly know of Aline's diary when no one else was aware of it?'

She was right. I was clutching at straws. Nevertheless, I persisted. ‘I repeat, did you leave her alone?'

Maria Beton made a despairing gesture, as one humouring an idiot. ‘I left her in the kitchen for perhaps five minutes while I picked some herbs for her from the garden. She wanted to try my recipe for braised venison, but had no fennel. We have plenty. But please! Do not go bothering Mistress Callender. You must see that she can know nothing.'

She seemed so disturbed by the fact that I might upset her neighbour that I let it go. All the same, I secretly determined to call on the goodwife when I left Master Sinclair's. But before doing that, I had a request to make.

‘May I be permitted to see upstairs?' I asked. ‘The bedchamber where the diary was found.' I saw a refusal hovering on her lips and added swiftly, ‘Who knows but that another pair of eyes might discover something? I know you will tell me that you have searched the chamber thoroughly, but it may be that you have overlooked some clue.'

‘How is that possible?' Her tone was contemptuous. ‘Robert put the diary back in the cupboard. Indeed, I saw him do it myself, and also lock the door afterwards.' Then, suddenly, she altered her tone. ‘But yes, why not? As you have said, two pairs of eyes may be better than one.'

She rose and signed to me to follow her. We left the solar and returned to the passage before mounting a narrow, twisting stair to an equally narrow landing with three doors leading from it. I could see why most people had preferred to have an outer staircase; the space was very cramped. Mistress Beton opened the door immediately ahead of us and ushered me into the front bedchamber with its bow window overhanging the street.

It was larger than I had expected, containing a canopied bed with hangings portraying the story of David and Bathsheba and covered with a gold and green quilt, a large clothes chest ranged along one wall, a rosewood bedside table with an inlaid marble top, a shelf supporting, as Maria Beton had said, various small pots, and, next to it, the cupboard, a lofty piece of furniture almost touching the ceiling. The housekeeper walked forward, took a key from the shelf and unlocked the door to it, flinging it wide.

‘There you are! You may search it for yourself.'

I did not immediately accept her invitation, instead strolling over to the window and peering into the street below. I recognized the way our cavalcade had ridden earlier that same morning, but which was now alive with the usual business of the day; stalls set up at each side of the road, the goodwives out marketing, baskets hooked over their arms, refuse being loaded on to carts but being replaced as fast as the inhabitants could drop even more filth in the gutters and, above all, important-looking messengers forcing a path through the crowds as they rode to and from the castle, laying about the local population with their batons. The shutters were standing open, so I was not only able to smell the pungent odours rising from the cobbles – the night's bodily voidings thrown from windows, rotting meat and vegetation – but also to hear the insults and imprecations that followed these self-important gentlemen as they went about their masters' business. (I couldn't understand exactly what was said, but the tone of voice and accompanying gestures needed no interpretation.)

I noticed that there was a narrow seat running round all three sides of the window, upholstered in dark green velvet. It was here, then, that Aline Sinclair had sat in preference to the downstairs solar, presumably watching for her lover. But when he had finally appeared, this man whose name began with J, walking either up or down the street, glancing towards the window where sat his murderously inclined young sweetheart, what happened next? As neither Rab nor Mistress Beton had previously known of his existence, he could not have been admitted to the house unless Aline was alone. I turned to my companion who still stood beside the open cupboard door.

‘Was your mist … I mean your cousin often by herself in the house?' I asked.

‘Of course there were occasions, yes.'

‘Frequently?'

She shrugged. ‘Often enough, I suppose. Robert had his own interests to attend to. I had food to buy. Robert likes his food,' she added with another slight smile. ‘He is a fussy eater.'

I thought briefly of the conditions in the cells of Edinburgh Castle and grimaced.

‘Where did you do your shopping? At these stalls?' And I gestured down towards the street.

She came across to my side then and peered out of the window, a little moue of distaste distorting her features.

‘Sometimes, but not always. There are better stalls to be found in the Grassmarket.'

‘Where's that?'

‘A street or so away. Why are you asking me all these questions? Why do you wish to know these things?'

‘I am trying to discover what opportunities Mistress Sinclair had to entertain a lover. Did you never feel sometimes, when you came home, that someone else had been in the house during your absence? That maybe, on occasions, that there was someone else present? Someone who perhaps was smuggled out later when you were busy in the kitchen or the garden?'

‘No, never,' she answered, but then hesitated. ‘At least, I have never thought about it until now. But … Yes, since you have put it into my mind, perhaps there were times when …'

‘When?'

‘When, as you say, a feeling that maybe something was not quite … quite right suggested itself to me. A creak of the stair … the closing of a door … Aline acting a little strangely.' She broke off, hand to her mouth, lost momentarily in contemplation of the past. But then, suddenly, she lifted her head and met my eyes squarely. ‘But nothing to rouse my suspicions. Not at the time.'

I nodded, satisfied. I had established that there had been opportunities for Aline to entertain a lover. I moved back to the cupboard, Mistress Beton following me.

Rab Sinclair's description of its contents had been accurate enough. Although there were a number of shelves, all of the upper and lower ones were empty. There remained just three, at eye-level, on which reposed various objects. The first of these was a cedarwood box, containing, as I had been told, a few items of jewellery. On the next shelf down rested, rather endearingly, a collection of childhood toys, including a wooden doll, still dressed in all her finery of a gold brocade gown and white lawn coif, a whipping top and a box of coloured counters, each carved in the likeness of a letter of the alphabet. And, finally, on the third shelf reposed the wedding dress of white Damascus silk.

I lifted it and shook out its folds, hoping against hope that something might fall to the floor; three or four sheets of parchment tied together with red ribbon. But, of course, nothing did. I felt with my hand all round the shelf. I examined all the lower shelves and stood on a stool, fetched by Maria Beton from another chamber, to make certain that the diary had not been replaced by mistake on an upper one. It wasn't there. My companion flicked me a pitying glance; an I-told-you-so look.

But I hadn't finished yet. I turned towards the bed.

It was then that I saw the coverlet properly in all its glory of green and gold, a pattern of leaves and branches. And the central medallion from which all this verdure sprang, was the head of the Green Man.

I
must have started or taken a step backwards because Mistress Beton asked sharply, ‘What's the matter?'